


So I can Only Wish for Selfish Things?

by BachandBefore



Category: Original Work
Genre: Demons, Money, Moral Ambiguity, Religion, Supernatural Elements, Time Travel, greed - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-27
Updated: 2017-08-27
Packaged: 2018-12-20 08:02:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,892
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11916639
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BachandBefore/pseuds/BachandBefore
Summary: What I, personally, would do with seven wishes from the Devil.





	So I can Only Wish for Selfish Things?

The first rule, of course, is that one can only wish for selfish things. If you wanted to save a life or help the world you had to take it up with the Lord. I suppose if you truly wanted to help the world, you would simply roll up your sleeves and get to work, and not waste time inventing silent soliloquies in the hopes that some deity would listen. But that’s not my style. This instantaneous stuff is.  
I don’t mean to say that I simply complained and complained until the demons showed up. I had been on the waiting list for a long, long time, and it would have been even longer if I had tried to contact the Devil himself. The quickest way to go is to seek the help of a subordinate, all of whom are pleasant and helpful, with a scrubbed and professional appearance. They are salespeople, after all. They don’t knock on your door drooling through their fangs with their skin hot-poker-hued. My demon, dubbed ‘X’ as speaking his real name aloud would have set the carpet on fire, appeared to me in a blazer and t-shirt with dark jeans and very clean Converse sneakers. It was a modern look and I did not care for it much, which he upon psychically realizing used his powers to morph his attire into a beautiful striped suit like something out of a 1940s photograph.  
“Hannah, is it?” remarked X, now looking much handsomer despite the two horn-tips peeking out from his hair, “Sorry. It’s just that we get so many college students these days, and they usually prefer something a bit more up-to-date.”  
“Not to worry.” I shook his hand and sat down across the desk form him. This particular demon did not do house calls, so I had had to make the trip to his office. “I didn’t realize those naïve little trust-fund babies had to stoop so low as to begging the powers of hell for help.”  
“Oh, all the time,” X assured, “especially the Ivy League ones. Why do you think so many of them go on to be successful businessmen? I take it from your comment and from my mind-reading abilities that you are not in school. A lot of emotion is tied to this thought, so let’s start there.”  
“Okay,” I agreed, smoothing down my skirt. “Well…I suppose you could say that poverty has deprived me of education.”  
“And you are tired of everyone telling you to just ‘get a scholarship.’” finished the demon. “As you have too much pride to slave away, working so much harder than a rich kid just so that you can be considered ‘as good’ as him. And you don’t even really want to go to school anyway, because you find institutionalized learning simply oozing with pretention, and you do not agree with the way intelligence is measured. I suppose, then, your wish is not really to go to college. In fact, I don’t really think it is to be educated.” He leaned forward in your seat. “There is plenty of longing attached here, but an anger, too. You want to prove something, be better than other people.”  
“You are good at your job,” I remarked, “I think you’re right.”  
“Of course I am.” He reached into his desk drawer for a cigar. “Now we have several options. You could wish for a fiery death to be inflicted on these rich kids who have wronged you. You could wish that college were tuition-free and that the riffraff would easily mix with the high class-and, while you are at it, you could wish for no private colleges, either, so that you would not be excluded. You could wish to be one of the rich kids yourself.” He raised his eyebrows. “Thoughts? Any of those suit you?”  
“Not quite.” I tapped my fingers a little, thinking. “I don’t want to fit in with people like that. I wonder…if one is rich enough, she doesn’t really need to go to school, does she? Why get a degree if you have enough money and don’t need to work?”  
“True, very true. So this will be a finance-related wish?”  
“I think so.” I pondered it for just a moment longer. “X, I wish that I will always have enough money. No matter what it is I want to buy, I wish that I would always have enough money for it.”  
“Very good,” X looked at his fingernails, “You know, there are a lot of people who don’t think to not set a dollar amount. They wish for a billion dollars or so and usually always end up bankrupt no matter how high they set their limit. Now, you have wished for infinity dollars, so you will not run into that problem, but I must remind you of the terms and conditions. Since Hell is giving you the money, we must approve each transaction. You will not be able to donate to charities, of course, and you most certainly may not give money to churches. You are able to donate to causes, but again, only if we approve them. Selfish material purchases are accepted and encouraged. Gifts to friends or family members are a little iffy…well, anyway, you have the brochure. You can look up the rules later. Do you want this as your official first wish?”  
“Yes. I wish to have unlimited money.”  
“It is done.” X gave me a congratulatory nod. “I look forward to seeing you again.”

The first thing I did was quit my job immediately-I was working the second shift as a data entry clerk, and it was enormously unpleasant. With nothing but leisure time I rolled around the town in a matte black Dodge Charger from 1969 which I had had to travel to Texas to get, letting the growl of the engine arouse my soul. When I tired of that method of transportation I switched over to my vintage Triumph Thunderbird, which I drove while wearing an outfit much like Marlon Brando’s in the Wild One. At last, I could afford one of those white hats! You would not believe how much they cost. And that was certainly not the only new outfit I obtained. After my cruises I returned home to stocks of delicious food and a closet filled with beautiful clothes. My shelves were piled with new books, and musical instruments of all kinds were hung up on the walls. Soon my belongings became too much for the tiny apartment I was living in and I purchased a three-bedroom place just a few streets away, hanging vintage posters up on the now-myriad walls. One room was entirely books, another entirely musical equipment, and each closet held a different category of clothing based on their degree of formality. And the shows! I had the best speaker system in the world at my new apartment, but a live show is always better. I traveled frequently to Boston and New York to hear the operas, and to many outdoor venues to see the old rock bands that no one else my age enjoys. In between this I went to wonderful restaurants and dance clubs and was always the best-dressed person in the room.   
But, of course, this was not to say I didn’t enjoy staying in my hometown; I had moved only a few streets away on purpose, since I liked it there. The only slight trouble was my family. They would not believe that I had won the lottery, since if I had done that I would have donated to charities, and of course I was not allowed to tell them about the wishes. Instead I hid the car and the motorcycle from them and claimed that I’d moved in with two roommates in order to save on rent. But I did claim to have gotten a big raise at work, and for my little sister’s birthday I took her to the local mall and let her buy whatever she wanted.   
“I still think you’ve secretly become a sugar baby or something,” remarked my older brother, when I presented him with a five-hundred dollar Amazon gift card. According to the brochure, direct gifts of cash were frowned upon, but this rule did not encompass pre-paid debit cards.  
My life was so wonderful that it didn’t seem like I would need to wish for anything else ever again. But as I stayed at home one night attempting to try on different outfits so I could pose in the enormous mirror, I realized very quickly that there was something more, and I took up my phone to arrange another meeting with X.  
“You’re looking…healthy,” the demon commented, this time in a black suit with a square-ended ‘60s tie.  
“It’s all the fancy restaurants I’ve been eating at,” I explained, “and so it’s easy to see what my next wish will be. But…but there’s actually two things I need, so I want to make my third wish right now, as well.”  
“One of them is beauty and fitness, of course,” X mused, “And the other…you’ve been thinking, that with your unlimited wealth, there is simply not enough time to spend at the mall within your eighty-odd years allotted on this planet.”  
“Right,” I affirmed, “So what I need is this. I want to always be in perfect shape and flawlessly attractive at all times, even when I first wake up in the morning. I want long hair, and perfect skin, and I want everyone I meet to find me the most beautiful person in the room. And I want it-and my wealth-to last forever, for eternity.”  
“I’m sorry,” X shook his head, “Eternal life is not allowed. Eventually you will need to die so that we can collect your soul. It’s like asking the teacher if you can simply never turn in a homework paper.”  
“Well, how much of an extension can I get?”   
“Let’s see…” X flipped through some papers on his desk. “Someone with your credit rating can get about four hundred years. If you are willing to do some malicious tasks for us you can go up to a thousand, but I can tell that you don’t want to live quite that long. So this is your second and third wishes? Shall we call it, virtually-eternal youth and beauty?”   
“Yes. I wish to always look beautiful, and always be young, and have a four-hundred-year-long life. And eat whatever I want without gaining weight.”   
“It is done.” X smirked a little. “You have no idea how popular that last bit it.”

I soon found my hatred of men to increase dramatically over the next few weeks. As promised, I was a lovely as anyone could be, while still being very much myself. My parents couldn’t quite put their finger on what had happened, but commented that I was looking well, very well. And each girl I passed glared and each guy I wandered within ten feet of acted entitled, insulting me horribly each time I told him to leave me alone.  
Still, I was happy, very happy, and spent a lot of time simply looking in the mirror. Why not? I had four hundred years to do anything I wanted. I liked my new neck best of all; how long and smooth it was, each contour perfectly placed, tracing nicely up into my head and working perfectly with my ballerina-like collarbones. My new hair hardly needed to be brushed, and I threw away about twenty bottles of expensive and ineffective zit treatments, finally unable to find a single pore even with my extensive hours of staring. All of my clothes fit perfectly, and each one made me look an exciting and unique brand of wonderful. I was the sexiest punk in the world one day, and as a sweet as an angel the next. Sometimes people on the street would actually weep to behold me, which was a bit much, but no sense complaining.   
“What is it with humans and beauty?” I asked X the next time I saw him, “this is all the ancient Greeks’ fault, I think. They’re the ones who came up with all this stuff about the gods being physically perfect, and thus equated beauty to divinity.”   
“I don’t know,” X replied, “The Greek gods and I never got along. Now, you are here, so clearly you are not happy merely being the richest and most beautiful human on the planet. Usually in this stage of the wishing my clients will ask to be president or their nation’s equivalent, and I was on more than one occasion requested to make someone into the supreme leader of the world. How does that sound to you? It would be very feminist, I think, to have a woman in such high power.”  
“No it wouldn’t,” I argued, “because I would simply have the power handed to me, instead of earning it on my own merit. And the leader of the world should be a realistic-looking woman and not some Satanically-created beauty queen. I think we’ve established that I am not very feminist at all, nor do I want the responsibility of ruling the world, so my next wish is going to be something very different. I wish for the ability to travel through time.”  
“Curious,” deemed X, “I don’t get that one very often. People almost always want the power to undo past mistakes, but it’s not as common for one to wish for, shall we say, superpowers. Things like flying and invisibly and time-travel are seen as irrelevant luxuries to those whose lives are so bad that they need to resort to demon-provided help.”  
“I don’t care much about past mistakes,” I replied, “I’m simply enormously curious. I want to see the culture of the olden days, and not just read about it in books. I want the excitement of trying to pass myself off as someone from a different time. And…and I want to see bands like the Rolling Stones, and Led Zeppelin, and the Beatles, and so many others, in their prime and not as the mere memories or half-dead sellouts that they are today.”   
“I’d say Keith Richards is at least three-fourths of the way dead at this point.” X was going through a desk drawer for another brochure. “Let’s see here…yes, we do grant time-travel, but I’ve noticed you only mention the past. Do you want future powers, too?”  
“I would not like to see the future. It frightens me.”  
“Yes, right. You do not want to live for a thousand years, either. Well, you will be able to see your old bands, but you will not be able to change history or otherwise alter past events. As you travel, you will be seeing a personalized version of the old times, sort of an alternate timeline in which you are included, and while you will be able to interact with people, it won’t be real in the sense of the world’s historical course. Does that make sense?”  
“Yes. That’s what I want. I only care to experience, not alter.”  
“Alright. Your fourth wish: to travel safely through any past time period, and to switch between them and return to the present whenever you want.”  
“Yes.”  
“It is done.” He looked at his fingernails. “You know what I like about this job? So many rock stars go to hell. I’ve been petitioning for Friday-night music festivals.”

I did not waste much time with historical events, though I did go to Nazi party rally simply out of curiosity. After being bored out of my mind by Rudolf Hess I rocketed ahead several years to the 1970s and to a live performance of Mick Jagger and the Rolling Stones. I refused to sell out to the man by getting ‘good seats’ and instead filed in with the general crowd, screaming and thrashing about, fascinated by the front man’s rubbery lips. I do not know your musical preferences, but take to heart that this was possibly the best experience of my entire wonderful life, and made even better by the fact that I had four hundred years to repeat it as often as I wanted. Being very beautiful, I was of course invited backstage, where I stayed only a few minutes before feeling quite faint and having to magically return to the present.  
After maybe a few weeks I was able to meet with the stars without feeling like I were about to die of joy, and so I had many thrilling exchanges with Robert Plant, Axl Rose, Vince Neil, and Janis Joplin, to name a very, very few. Some of my favorites were Charlie Watts, who is obviously the best Rolling Stone; John Lennon, who I burst into awed tears upon seeing in the flesh; and Slash, the real talent of Guns n’ Roses, though usually too drunk and stoned to be coherent. Eventually I branched out to other experiences such as the first performances of Wagnerian operas and the time Beethoven cried onstage after misinterpreting the audience’s reaction to the ninth symphony. I wept at Tchaikovsky’s ballets and laughed at the crass early productions of Shakespearean plays. And, being me, I picked up many amazing outfits along the way.  
Then, one day in the twenties, tragedy struck. I was at the café when my heart was assaulted by the most amazing young man who came up to me and started a conversation. He was so charming and polite, well-read and with great knowledge of music, and didn’t look at me the way that all straight men had ever since the installment of my second and third wishes. Immediately I ran to another time, but in the fifties, the same terror inflicted itself upon me; this time, the leather-jacketed greaser melted me with a surprisingly gentle gaze, one reserved only for me, as he would not tolerate any nonsense from these college brats or posers. The ‘70s punk also refused to leave my mind and heart alone, as well as the simple, hardworking farm hand from the 1800s. Eventually I took to locking myself in my Present room at night, trying to figure out how to travel safely, and eventually sighed and picked up the phone.  
“You,” X accused, “are very picky. I have other clients, you know. And what about me? I haven’t gotten a vacation in seven hundred years.”   
“Hey, I’m paying you a good soul for this. Now, my fifth wish is causing me trouble, because I’m not sure exactly what I need.”  
“Ugh,” X took out a cigar, “Another thing is, you always wish for such hard things. Money’s an easy one, everyone wants that. But the way you spend is so…odd. Why don’t you get a place with a ten-car garage and Olympic-size pool so that I could send someone to audit you? You don’t even buy the good tickets at the shows you time-travel too, which is another issue, I have to admit.”  
“I’m not going to sell out to the man! And why is time-travel an issue?”  
“It takes a lot of dark magic to keep a wish like that working properly. Especially since you do it so much. But, yes, I know, I am getting your soul. I think you would like to know that the value of your soul has actually gone up since starting these wishes, since you have had so many experiences.”  
“I didn’t realize souls had values.”  
“It’s more of a bragging rights thing,” X admitted, “especially if we manage to wrangle a kind, hardworking, and well-educated person into coming to Hell. What’s the fun of getting someone like Stalin or Genghis Kahn or anyone who just hands himself to us like that? No, the real fun is in corruption.” He smirked, leaning back in his seat. “Like you. You’ve become so wonderfully greedy, I’ve actually started to boast to my co-workers.”  
“I’m flattered.” I took out my own cigarette, on a long black holder from 1923. “But I still need your help.”  
“Right, right. With boys.” He started to snicker. “Oh, this is almost too fun. First you need help choosing one, right? And then you want to be irresistible to him.”  
“And then I’ll realize that the only love Hell can create is fabricated and unsatisfying. And I don’t want to fall in love! It’s embarrassing, and painful, and enormously distracting-”  
“But you wanted to be very beautiful.”  
“A woman’s power is in her beauty. It has nothing to do with love.”   
“I see.” X lit his cigar, then held out the lighter for me. “I’m sort of surprised you didn’t wish for some kind of world where humans were valued for their minds and skills, and beauty were not the be-all-end-all of the universe, but I suppose you knew that we would never allow a wish like that. We thrive on insecurity here in Hell; it breeds hopelessness, and that’s when we attract new clients. You are already so beautiful, what is the problem? You want a man who doesn’t notice your looks, or something absurd like that?”  
“It is absurd?” I was raising an eyebrow now. “Tell me, X…are there any good men in the world?”  
“No matter who seek as a romantic partner, he or she will still be a human. And no, you cannot date a non-human. We demons aren’t even capable of love, and angels have such high standards-”  
“That’s it! That’s perfect.” I jumped out of my seat in excitement. “X, I want my fifth wish to be that I cannot fall in love, and that I don’t care at all about romance or impressing potential romantic partners. And while I’m at it, I don’t want to care about having friends, either. I wish to be perfectly happy all alone forever.”  
X shrugged. “It is done.” 

Not far into this wish I was summoned once more to X’s office.  
“You need to make a sixth wish,” he announced.   
“Oh, is there a time limit? I’ve just been having the most wonderful time. I have everything I’ve ever wanted, and other humans are just so petty and beneath me that each time I step outside I am decadently amused. Why doesn’t everyone wish not to care what people think about them? I should have done this earlier, and saved myself from wasting a wish on being beautiful!”  
“Sorry, you cannot take back a wish. You can only use another wish to get rid of the old one. And either way, you need to hurry up and finish this contract, because every single time you need someone to talk to you always call me even though a lot of the time it has nothing to do with wishes at all! I’m sorry that you hate your fellow man now, but you are still human, and you can’t just have chats with demons whenever you please.”  
“Other humans disgust me! Look at them all, walking like upside-down-Ls because their faces are stuck in their iPhones! What’s so interesting on there? No one cares about anything at all anymore, no one has any passion! They just want to watch internet videos and never make any real music or art or pieces of writing, or really make any change in the world! And don’t you dare call me a hypocrite, I have been using my time to get experiences, and practice my instruments, and read, and I have learned so much! I’ve gone to other countries, learned new languages! I’ve heard the best music in the world, and seen the most beautiful natural sights! I am not wasting my extended life on my cell phone! Or gossiping!”   
“And as a result, you have no one to expound to on your newfound philosophies and you always end up calling me! Why can’t you go back in time, to before cell phones-”  
“No one will listen to me back then because I’m a woman. And even in more progressive times, I am too beautiful for anyone to do anything except stare.”   
“Why don’t you wish to be a man? Your previous wishes are transferable between genders.”  
“You’re just trying to get rid of me!”  
“Well, yes! It’s true, you are one of the most intelligent and knowledgeable humans in the world now, but again, you are still a human! We demons talk about unearthly things, far more interesting than even the strangest of humans could fathom. You are simply not one of my kind and you are wasting my time. Now make a wish to know some humans who are as unusual and intelligent as you, and let us say goodnight.”  
“No.” I was out of my seat, pacing around the room. “That’s not quite right. I only have two wishes left and I want to make the most of them. I don’t want to know humans, because in order to be human, one must want to interact with his fellow man, and he or she must be able to love, to some degree. I don’t want any of those things, I don’t want to come into contact with those who do…in fact, I think, even if I am not a demon, I am not really a human anymore, either.”  
For once X had nothing to say. I watched him, still at his desk, for a long moment. “Then what do you propose?” he asked at last.  
I looked right at him. “I want to be made into a demon.”  
“Sorry, that’s not possible. We’ve had metalheads and Goths wish for the same thing, but it simply isn’t included in the list of acceptable wishes.”  
“Why not?” I spat, “Is there some kind of qualifying exam? Let me at least attempt to take it. I can’t love anyone, I can only hate. I am beautiful and powerful and very intelligent, able to predict humans, to manipulate them. In short, I would make a valuable asset to the team. Can I speak with your supervisor about an interview?”  
“That’s…no! Okay? You may not.”  
“You have to! It’s my wish! If you don’t fulfil my wish you cannot have my soul, and then what will your boss do to you?”  
“I will fulfil your sixth wish, but you have to wish for something else! If you become a demon, you will no longer have a human soul for us to harvest, and the profit will be lost.”   
“But you will have another member of the team who will bring in more souls, instead of just the one! The profit will go up!”  
“You’re too hot-headed to make a good member of the team. You won’t get any clients.”  
“Nonsense. If someone is so desperate that he is begging for help from hell, he won’t care how rude the help is. In fact, he’ll expect rudeness! Are we demons or not?”  
“You are not.”  
“I bet you won’t make me into a demon simply because you don’t want to work with me.”  
“Well, that is part of it.” He massaged his forehead with his hand. “Listen. This is a bureaucratic issue. If you’re willing to wait a long time I can put you on the list to see the Devil and you may take it up with him, but for now, it is impossible for us to grant a wish like that.”  
“Then my sixth with is that I wish I could wish to be made into a demon, and my seventh wish is that I wish I were a demon.”  
“You are horrible.”  
“Those are my wishes.”   
“You-” X threw up his hands. We were silent for an even longer moment then before, while he tapped his fingertips on his desk top, scowling. I waited, glaring him down the entire time, until he lifted his eyes.  
“If you become a demon,” he announced, “you forfeit your previous wishes. A demon cannot be granted wishes. We do not really have the same kind of life that a human has, since we are not created by God, and therefore can’t really die, either, meaning your third wish, for a long lifespan, is nullified. You may remain beautiful-it will help lull clients into a false sense of security, especially the more moronic male ones-but your beauty will not be the result of a wish you made as a human. You will not need money as a demon, so your first wish is nullified, too. And, of course, demons feel no love. If you become a real demon, even a lesser one, you will be given a lot of powers that you will not know how to use. You will have to attend a one-hour training session and watch some videos. And of course, if you are hired, you will need to bring in a certain amount of souls per period. Are you okay with all of that? My suggestion would be to stay as a human, live out the rest of your wishes-”  
“I am not human. I do not want to be one.” I smiled a little. “I want to be like you.”   
X raised one eyebrow. He was reaching for his phone, gesturing for me to sit down with the other hand. “I’m going to call my supervisor. He’ll begin the interview process.”


End file.
